Hey everyone, I’ve finally wrapped up everything I was doing the past two days; it hasn’t exactly been easy or comforting. Yesterday I received a call from the hospital about what happened to the remaining members of the Cabal; the last of them passed away that morning… I’ll admit, while it was not necessarily surprising given what had happened to them during the confrontation, it still shook me up considerably. With that in mind, I finally decided to take a look at the letters that had been given to me and did my best to fulfill any requests on them, which is what I was doing yesterday. I’ll copy them and post them here for you guys to see.

Morgan wrote:“If you are reading this letter, then I am surely dead. If all is well in the world, then I have but a few requests.

I would like my bones to lie in what is known as Glastonbury, Wales. I do not require a large funereal service, nor do I wish for one. I do not even require a stone. A resting place under an apple tree is all I ask. There should be money contained within this envelope, unless it has been stolen away. I have done the math and this should be enough for expenses.

Please send an email to my employers, [REDACTED], to let them know that I will not be able to continue my work with them. I have an apartment in Los Angeles - please call my landlord, [REDACTED], and let know that I will be breaking my lease. And please, if you are not affiliated with watchthefootage.com, then please go to the forum there and deliver this message from me:

I have appreciated your correspondance, and the opportunity to better get to know this world and its many inhabitants. I knew what I was fighting for, and I thank you for the opportunity to fight rather than to be sent back.

Morgan”

Melissa wrote:“My loving husband,

Exchanging letters was a wonderful idea! I haven’t sat down to handwrite a letter in...gosh, it must be years. What memories.

In any case, I want to let you know that I understand that this “business trip” is not what you say it will be. I can see that it will be dangerous. I could tell by the way your eyes looked for the last few days. It was as though your hope for a bright future together had been extinguished.

I have not lost hope. Whatever it is, I know in my heart that you will prevail and that you will come back to me. I have faith in you, my love. I will worry, as you know I do, but I do not doubt your abilities for even a second.

I love you, Juan.

Melissa”

Morgan and Juan’s were pretty straight forward…but Erik’s came with a usb and a rather long letter:

Erik wrote:“I had intended to release the contents of this letter to you some time ago, at the height of Moriarty’s immoral connivings, when his actions threatened to undo the best of what we had fought to achieve. Releasing them would have been my attempt to undermine him.

Some of these chats are quite old, and some even predate Morgan’s renunciation of extreme measures. She comes off in the chats as more... militant than you are used to. This is not a revelation of her true character; rather, it is an outdated portrait of a woman terrified of being separated from a man she was not yet disillusioned about. The earliest chats included here occurred prior to any email correspondence occurred with you.

I like to think that I helped change her mind about you. Perhaps it was my letter, and the fallout therefrom, which began to open her eyes.

Despite the way she comes across, she agreed to releasing these in spite of their content as a final gesture of goodwill (as if standing in Cthulhu’s way will not be enough).

In my original plan, each piece of this puzzle was to be seeded, sent to different recipients, so you might piece it together like my previous message. It was my hope that you could collaborate to complete it, while Moriarty, being one person, might not be able to track all the pieces down.

Morgan discovered my plans, and informed me that I was being foolish. Moriarty had been able to complete my last puzzle, despite my attempts to make it difficult for one person. She told me that you were already working hard enough to save the world, and did not need our chat logs. They would be a distraction.

However, she agreed that there was no reason not to include them in my farewell, as I bid you adieu. I considered simply releasing the chat ID’s directly, but we both agreed that you seemed to enjoy fitting together the pieces of puzzles like this... and so, as a last thank-you for all that you have done, I have made it no easier to complete.

Perhaps I will survive the battle, and I will release them myself after all... and feel the fool as I pull this note from my pocket, re-reading its portents of doom. Perhaps not.

As I bow before the curtain, I quote my favorite student: Think of me, think of me fondly, as we say goodbye.

-Erik”

The USB had some images and files related to his letter which I’ll provide in the post. So it looks like Erik left us one last puzzle, if you guys are interested in solving it. From the sound of it, it’s the last remaining chats on their pheeble site I’m guessing. It might be interesting to find them, maybe it’ll help clear some things up, and seeing as the world is saved we’re not under any sort of time constraint this time around, we can solve it at our leisure.

…I was spending most of today and yesterday setting up for a funeral for them, as well as setting everything up that Morgan desired in her letter. I figured it was the least I could do for the three of them; they saved my life after all.

Anyway, sorry I was afk for so long. Here are the things that were on the USB.

Attachments

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If you ever need to ask the questions "Am I needed? Should I help them?" The answer is always yes. Always.

Okay, I'm going through this cryptogram and I think it uses multiple keys. I suspect the serif font indicates when there is a key change, but that's just a guess at this time. Running this a sentence or two at a time through a cryptogram cracker got me a possible "egvvyem" = "connect"...

But soft! What rock through yonder window breaks? It is a brick! And Juliet is out cold!Man, I'm really glad R&J got refic'd before I added this signature.

If it's based on a key then there's quite a number of key changes. Whenever I try to crack codes I always look for a common three-letter word that corresponds to "the" but as far as I know no three-letter word appears more than once in this pdf...